Home town act  Radicus took centre stage to kick off the evening's entertainment, well to be more accurate they, actually took up some of the floor space as well, as no-one else appeared to want to use it. It was actually good for once good to see a young band that were confident and looked like they actually wanted to be on stage and with a few  decent songs to back up this confidence they are definitely competent enough and on the strength of this performance there is certainly more than a glimmer of hope for the band. 

Canadian’s Burnthe8track were next  up and turned in as solid a performance as the openers. Singer Derek Kun proved a commanding focal point as the band hurled through their set with the likes of ‘Ocean’ and ‘1949’ making the biggest impressions.  

If the opening two acts had proved decent enough Death Before Dishonor moved things up a notch and, although they wear their influences on their collective sleeves, they blasted through a hat full of quality hardcore tunes in the allotted time.  It was enough to get a few people in the crowd more into proceedings, even if the band themselves seemed strangely motionless, admittedly that was perhaps down to vocalist Bryan sporting an injured foot, believed to be broken, which limited his effectiveness slightly.

Ignite are still touring their 2006 album Our Darkest Days, which considering it is one of the better albums in recent years is no bad thing.  They came on stage to ‘Intro (Our Darkest Days)’, before everything erupted with ‘Bleeding’ which for the first time of the night saw the crowd fully involved, yelling the lyrics at full volume.   

With the likes of  ‘Fear Is Our Tradition’, ‘Let It Burn’, ‘Poverty For All’, ‘My Judgement Day’ and the band's cover of U2’s ‘Sunday Bloody Sunday’ keeping the momentum going even the introduction of a spokesman from the Sea Shepherd charity,  giving a brief explanation of their work, couldn't  distract from the show, instead it actually gave Ignite an excuse to leave the stage only to return with acoustic guitars for superb  renditions of ‘Slowdown’ and ‘Live For Better Days’.  

Considering that the band has been on the road for so long it was remarkable that they could still find the enthusiasm to play with such vigour and that Zoli Teglas’ voice sounds so good. Suffice to say that Ignite put on an amazing show, one made  even better by the fact the band requested that the barriers, which normally adorn the front of the stage, be removed thus bringing the audience more fully into the show. But it wasn't all about the Our Darkest Days album,  Ignite also mixed in a few older crowd favourites,  ‘Who Sold Out’, ‘A Place Called Home’, ‘By My Side’, ‘Man Against Man (No For An Answer)’, ‘Embrace’ and the final song of the evening ‘Veteran’ all meaning that the Peterborough crowd went home very happy indeed.  Overall, although Ignite were a class apart, this was all about four bands putting in stellar performances to deliver great entertainment.

Darren Brushneen